Articles
	Santa Barbara News-Press CHOREOGRAPHER OF COLOR SUMMERDANCE’s Brian Brooks Thinks Pink July 2004 By Tom Jacobs Artistic inspiration can be found nearly anywhere – even in a Laundromat in Brooklyn. At least, that’s the experience of Brian Brooks, whose “Dance-o-Matic” owes its title to the fact he was running out of clean clothes. “I was just starting the process of making a new piece,” the 30-year-old choreographer recalled. “(When I’m in that mode), I collect ideas from all different sources. I have my radar on at all times. “I was at the Laundromat when I glanced over and saw this little dispensing machine for wire hangers. It had this little coat hanger with a cartoon face on it. There were those little lines around the hands, suggesting it was dancing. “It said ‘Hanger-o-Matic.’ I thought, “That’s it! Dance-o-Matic!” At the moment, Brooks is laundering his leotards locally. In residence as part of SUMMERDANCE Santa Barbara, he is creating a new work, parts of which will be featured in a choreographer’s showcase July 23. In addition, his Brian Brooks Moving Company will perform the widely acclaimed “Dance-o-Matic” Wednesday and Thursday nights at the Center Stage Theater. The title, with its playful allusion to automation, “linked up with other ideas that were already in process,” he explained in a pre-rehearsal interview. “I was choreographing everything for the five dancers in unison. We’re very dry in our facial expression. So there’s a desensitized persona. It’s about precision and uniformity. “It is inspiring to me to look at one simple, tiny thing very deeply, and find a wealth of information – really investigate it so we find all the details and nuance. In ‘Dance-o-Matic,’ each piece focuses on one specific physicality, like jumping, sliding on the floor or jogging in place. In one piece, we only use our arms. We just do variations in timing and direction. It’s pendulum-like.” If the feel of the work is mechanical, the look is anything but. Come to think of it, the look is reminiscent of what can go wrong in a Laundromat, specifically when you mix the whites with a bright red blouse. “The whole show is designed in pink,” Brooks said. “I was looking at the contrast between strong, rigorous physicality against the color pink, which has so many cultural connotations (of softness and femininity). “The floor is pink vinyl, surrounded by a square of pink fluorescent light. So it lights up like John Travolta’s dance floor in ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ We have feather boas and balloons and satin ribbons – all kinds of pink stuff. “In its composition, it’s formal modern dance,” he noted. “If you saw it in the rehearsal studio, you might not giggle so much. But if we drench the whole room in pink, and then we do this formal dance, people giggle. Men wearing pink tights? It’s ridiculous. “But it’s interesting to ask why it is ridiculous. You have to look at the culture. Where does the idea come from that pink is girly?” Brooks has been exploring such provocative questions in dance for his entire adult life – and most of his adolescence. A native of Hingham, MA, his first love was drawing. Before turning 10, “I went through a cartoon phase, then an architectural phase, when I would draw plans for buildings,” he said. In junior high school, he started doing set designs, which got him into the drama club. “I quickly found a group of friends who danced, so I started dancing,” he said. At age 14, Brooks – who had yet to take a single dance class – decided to from his own company. “I went to the principle at the public high school where I was a freshman, and said I needed the theater,” he recalled. “He said fine. I got a board together, applied for a grant and got funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. They wrote a check and we put on a show. We sold out a 400-seat auditorium. “We did one show annually for the next four years. At the end of it, I got a scholarship at a dance studio. So at age 17, I started training. Within a month, I was invited into a professional company in Boston, and started performing.” At age 20, Brooks moved to New York City. “I performed for probably 15 choreographers over my first five years, overlapping projects,” he said. A three-year stint with choreographer Elizabeth Streb was particularly gratifying. But Brooks never gave up his goal to create his own company – or, rather, his second company. He did so in 1996. “It’s still a relatively young company,” he noted. “The growth is happening rapidly, but I think in the right way. There’s a demand for the work right now. People are interested in what we’re doing.” Over the past two years, the troupe has toured all over the United States and as far as South Korea. They discovered that their work is quite audience-friendly, even in communities not known for their artistic sophistication. “The entertainment aspect of dance is very important to me,” he said. “A lot of our work is very humorous. It’s really fast and a little garish. People laugh at many different times in our performances, which is said to be a little unusual in modern dance. “Visually, we work in what I call a pop art aesthetic. Everything about it is bold and vibrant. If it was a drawing, it would be outlined in bold, black, permanent marker.” Which is not to say it is obvious. “I believe art is very subjective,” Brooks said. “The most profound experiences I have had with art have been with abstract paintings – Rothko or Jackson Pollack. Something that allows me to bring my own knowledge and context to what I’m observing and create my own emotional content. “The work we do is rarely based in narrative or character or emotion. It is about action and timing. What I discover is emotions can be the result. If you have something that’s musically very slow, and the dancers keep descending to the ground – they keep falling and crawling and crumbling to the floor – it’s almost obviously sad. But it’s not like I’m dealing with a specific, personal trauma on stage. It’s the idea and the sounds and the motions of sadness. “People challenge me (when I tell them this). They’ll say, ‘I see character. I see narrative.’ I think each individual who observes the work has their own interpretation. You can make it as personal or as general as you want. You can reflect off it how you want to and need to.” Brooks’s latest work, which he is creating in Santa Barbara, “is all white. But as the piece progresses, we introduce colors. We’re doing that through different devices, including props, costume changes and paint. By the end of the piece, the stage is basically splattered with colors, kind of like a giant canvas. “I’m thrilled about it – but it’s not so easy to dance on wet paint, I have to tell you! I took a little tumble last week. I have a vinyl floor. I taped it down, poured a bunch of blue paint on it and turned on my camera. I thought I’d do a fantastic improvisational dance. It was going really well; I didn’t think at all of the slippery aspect of paint on high-gloss vinyl! My feet went went right out from under me.” Sounds like it’s time for another trip to the Laundromat.